The Academy's Savior
"Moka."
Crackling electricity surged. The high-ranking spirit Moka unfurled her wings and appeared before me.
A massive surge of mana drained away in an instant as Moka fully materialized.
"Kuuuk."
Moka spread her wings wide. Dozens of lightning bolts flashed from those glittering wings and streaked toward the skeleton.
The skeleton staggered under the strikes. Holes punched through its bones in several places. But only for a moment. The curse gathered again, flooding back into the skeleton. The damaged sections regenerated.
I frowned.
Not only did Moka's firepower fail to finish it in one go… that goddamn overwhelming curse is the real problem.
"Yujin. We have to find the medium of the curse and destroy it."
Shin Na-ri spoke. I understood her meaning at once. Somewhere in this academy, Kim Je-o was hiding, and we had to find him.
"Senior, do you know where that bastard is?"
"I don't… but Auntie might."
That was plausible enough. An evil spirit would be far more sensitive to curses than either living me or Shin Na-ri.
The regenerated skeleton looked ominous. Its jaw yawned open and poured out a torrent of curse. Moka stepped forward, holding back the wave of curse that came crashing in like a tide.
"Kuuuk…"
She wouldn't last long. That was the will Moka conveyed to me. Some of the curse she failed to block brushed against my body. My skin turned dry and flaky.
Summoning Makina wouldn't give me any real options either… looks like I'll have to do that.
I whipped my head around to look at Shin Na-ri and Callas. Shin Na-ri was enduring the curse even better than Moka, while Callas stood behind her, frowning. With her contract to the high-ranking darkness spirit severed, Callas was a terrible matchup against that skeleton right now.
"Na-ri senior. Can you hold that thing off for a bit? Five seconds is enough."
"I can."
"I'm counting on you."
Shin Na-ri released the curse she had stored in the straw rope I had given her. For a brief instant that curse overwhelmed the skeleton's own and even seemed to push back—then it began to lose ground. The skeleton's curse was nearly as endless as the sea itself.
"Moka. It's been a while. Spirit Possession."
"Kuk!"
Moka flew over and sank into my body. My physique changed. Hair and skin turned pure white, and wings of pure thunder current sprouted from my back. The sensation was alien, yet my mind already knew exactly what to do.
I kicked off the ground and leapt. Thunder wings beat and accelerated me. The skeleton stretched a bone-white hand toward me. I kicked that massive hand. It shattered into fragments that scattered in every direction. I slipped past the other hand as it swung and closed the distance.
I clenched my fist hard. Crackling electricity gathered and compressed into my knuckles. I drove that fist straight into the skeleton's skull.
The skeleton shattered like glass hitting the floor. Curse surged in, trying to regenerate it again. I kept swinging my fists at the curse itself.
Crackling, roaring thunder!
The current erupting from my fists burned the curse away. That once-endless sea of curse seemed to abandon the skeleton entirely and vanished without a trace.
I landed and released the Spirit Possession. Spirit Possession was excellent in every way except for the brutal stamina drain.
"…You possessed a spirit. I've never heard of spirit arts like that. Is it a secret technique of the Jinryeong Seong Family?"
"That's right. Keep it quiet if you can."
"Of course. I'm not the kind of foolish teacher who goes around blabbing her disciple's techniques."
I glanced at Shin Na-ri. She seemed completely uninterested in whether I fused with a spirit or not.
"Senior. What do you see?"
"As the curse drained out of this space… Auntie got swept away with it."
Come to think of it, the evil spirit that always clung to Shin Na-ri was gone. I used Spirit Eye to examine the flows of curse leaving this place. I could see them. The problem was that there wasn't just one or two streams.
"Senior. Can you tell where the evil spirit is headed?"
"Yeah. I can feel Auntie's presence. It never used to be like this… but now I feel something deep with her."
This was the evil spirit that had always been attached to Shin Na-ri. Being suddenly swept away by a curse flow made no sense.
"Maybe it moved toward the source of the curse. Senior, guide us to where the evil spirit is."
"Okay."
Shin Na-ri sprinted down the right-hand corridor without hesitation. She shoved open the exterior door at the end and ran outside.
"W-what is this…?!"
"……"
Callas was stunned. I narrowed my eyes and surveyed the surroundings.
The sky was dyed crimson, and the ground was planted with pitch-black hands like some grotesque flowerbed. The hands writhed, groping for something to seize.
"The academy's barrier has been altered by the curse…? This is impossible. The academy's barrier is one of the finest in all of Korea…! No matter how rampant a curse becomes, the barrier itself shouldn't be able to transform. …Unless someone else…"
"Callas-sensei. It's already happened. We can figure out the cause later… right now we need to catch up to Shin Na-ri senior."
"Ah…? N-Na-ri! You have to stick with us!"
Shin Na-ri, who had been charging ahead, slowed her pace. Callas and I followed behind her, scanning the area. Just as Callas said, the corrupted barrier made everything look distorted.
A short distance away, teachers were fighting a tree monster. I deliberately made my presence known, yet the teachers never looked our way. Callas couldn't even perceive them.
Distortion from the corrupted barrier, no doubt. The only reason I can see them is Spirit Eye.
No need to help the teachers.
They were academy instructors. Depending on their specialty there would be differences, but their combat power was at least B-Class hero level or higher.
Shin Na-ri's legs never stopped running. On that face that was always expressionless and calm, I could now see impatience and anxiety. She might lose the evil spirit. That ominous thought was what made her so restless. The evil spirit was her family, after all.
The place Shin Na-ri arrived at was a garbage dump. Its scale was extraordinary. Trash lay scattered everywhere. The stench stabbed at the nose. Looking closer, there were even things that looked like monster corpses.
This place was both a dump and an incineration site.
Once a month, under the pretext of practical training, the magic department students incinerated the trash with magic. The magic students looked forward to incineration day. Why? Because burning trash with magic was excellent stress relief. Legal arson. Legal destruction.
"Something… feels creepy."
Callas spoke. It wasn't just her imagination. Curse had pooled in this dump. The stagnant curse was overflowing and spreading throughout the entire academy. In other words, this was the source of the curse.
"Kim Je-o… that bastard. He was hiding in the dump. Of all places… he's got a strong stomach."
"What…. Kim Je-o is hiding here? Where is he?"
"I don't have the exact location yet… but I'm certain he's here. Think about it. Is there any better place to hide?"
"True enough. There's no caretaker for the dump, and no one comes looking except on incineration day. Even if someone did show up, if you buried yourself in the trash it'd be hard to find you…"
Callas accepted it.
Shin Na-ri stared into empty air. The evil spirit drifted over, swaying, and latched onto her back. Both Shin Na-ri's gaze and mine turned toward the spot the evil spirit indicated.
I drew up mana and stomped a true step. Trash erupted into the air and flew in every direction. Once the garbage was cleared, Kim Je-o was revealed lying on the ground, body hidden.
Kim Je-o's condition was obviously terrible at a glance. His seaweed-like hair was dry and brittle, his body withered like a scarecrow. Red blotches covered the skin exposed outside his clothes. Strange objects were lined up around him. Cursed objects.
Kill him.
No reason to hesitate. Kim Je-o was already a wanted criminal. Even if I killed him, no responsibility would fall on me.
Crackling thunder.
I generated lightning in front of me, seized it, and hurled it at Kim Je-o. But the bolt never touched his body. Pitch-black curse deflected the lightning.
Kim Je-o opened his eyes. Orange light writhed in those pupils. Then he flailed his limbs and pushed himself upright. The movements were somehow detached from anything human.
"Kim Je-o is dead. Dead… but still alive."
Shin Na-ri said.
I roughly understood what that contradictory statement meant. The curse had turned him into something close to an evil spirit. In a world where the existence of souls had been proven, it wasn't particularly strange.
Kim Je-o rose.
Caw, caw, caw.
Dozens of crows perched on the fences surrounding the dump and cried out.
The flow of curse reversed. The curse that had been pouring out from Kim Je-o now gathered back into him instead.
"Seong… Yujin…!!"
Kim Je-o's scraping voice called my name.
In the world of curses and hexes, names were special. A name was said to be the very proof of one's existence, or something like that.
"Seong Yujin!!!"
Curse clung to his voice. The target of that curse was me.
A cut opened on the back of my hand. Blood spattered and dripped onto the ground. The wound widened further under the curse.
I shook the curse off with mana and spoke.
"Callas-sensei, Na-ri senior, give me a hand."
"Calling for reinforcements… the situation's too bad for that. Haa. I was too hasty."
"Okay. What should I do?"
"Senior. Can you possess with the evil spirit? Not forcibly. If you go berserk it'll be a problem."
"I can. I… trust Auntie now."
"That helps."
Kim Je-o's body swelled. Muscles writhed madly; his legs burst and regenerated over and over. Entrails endlessly spilled from his torso.
"Seong Yujin…! I'll kill you…!"
Kim Je-o, now over three meters tall, stretched a hand toward the trash. Monster corpses, food scraps, and more stuck to his body and formed armor.
"Auntie."
The evil spirit possessed Shin Na-ri. Her white hair dyed black, her skin flushed red. Those once-dead fish eyes now glittered like jewels.
Shin Na-ri smiled, licked her lips with her tongue, and directed pure killing intent at Kim Je-o.
"Moka."
Moka sank into my body. Having successfully completed Spirit Possession, I spread my thunder wings and rose into the sky.
Bone wings erupted from the back of Kim Je-o, who was staring only at me. Those bone wings beat once, and Kim Je-o rose into the sky as well.
"How arrogant, thinking you can fly the same skies as me."
I moved the thunder wings. Thunder pealed, and dozens of wing feathers made of lightning bolts hurtled toward Kim Je-o. Unaccustomed to flight, Kim Je-o couldn't dodge the feathers and had to take them head-on. A heavy scream rang out as his body plummeted back into the dump.
Shin Na-ri charged at Kim Je-o. Her nails tore out his flesh and entrails.
"Heh, heheheheh!"
Shin Na-ri laughed. Kim Je-o tried to shove her away with massive amounts of curse, but Shin Na-ri—whose body was itself a cursed object and who now wielded the power of an evil spirit—absorbed the curse instead. She reinforced her nails with the absorbed curse and attacked.
Absorb the curse, reinforce, attack. Simple, yet fatal for Kim Je-o.